Quality of life and hormones after sex reassignment surgery

Abstract

Background

Transpeople often look for sex reassignment surgery (SRS) to improve their quality of life (QoL). The hormonal therapy has many positive effects before and after SRS. There are no studies about correlation between hormonal status and QoL after SRS.

Aim

To gather information on QoL, quality of sexual life and body image in transpeople at least 2 years after SRS, to compare these results with a control group and to evaluate the relations between the chosen items and hormonal status.

Subjects and methods

Data from 60 transsexuals and from 60 healthy matched controls were collected. Testosterone, estradiol, LH and World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-100) self-reported questionnaire were evaluated. Student’s t test was applied to compare transsexuals and controls. Multiple regression model was applied to evaluate WHOQOL’s chosen items and LH.

Results

The QoL and the quality of body image scores in transpeople were not statistically different from the matched control groups’ ones. In the sexual life subscale, transwomen’s scores were similar to biological women’s ones, whereas transmen’s scores were statistically lower than biological men’s ones (P = 0.003). The quality of sexual life scored statistically lower in transmen than in transwomen (P = 0.048). A significant inverse relationship between LH and body image and between LH and quality of sexual life was found.

Conclusions

This study highlights general satisfaction after SRS. In particular, transpeople’s QoL turns out to be similar to Italian matched controls. LH resulted inversely correlated to body image and sexual life scores.

Notes

Compliance with ethical standards

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for profit sector.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study, involving human participants, were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Informed consent

An informed consent was obtained from all participants/controls. To maintain privacy, all data were coded. All transsexuals’ data were collected as part of the clinical and psychological routine procedures.